


The Prolonging of Desire

by PhoenixFalls



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Kind of angsty?, Masturbation, Multi, No Explicit Consent, POV Female Character, Pepper Feels, Post-IM3, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:30:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixFalls/pseuds/PhoenixFalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper <i>wants</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Prolonging of Desire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).



The first thing that Pepper wants about Rhodey is the line of his back in his uniform – regulation straight, obviously strong, but flexible in a way most of the other soldiers in Tony’s orbit aren’t, supple enough to take the weight of Tony’s eccentricities and bend around them, rather than breaking under them. When she has time, when she is indulging herself with fantasy rather than simply using her vibrator to get off as efficiently as possible, she pictures the way his back would bend and flex if she coaxed him to go down on her.

As the weeks turn into months after the attack on Tony’s convoy, Pepper watches Rhodey’s back change – still regulation straight, still obviously strong, but all the flexibility gone brittle. The uniform begins wearing him, and Pepper wants to strip it off and dig her fingers into him, massage the long muscles in his shoulders and his lats with one of her scented oils until they get that suppleness back.

* * *

The first thing Pepper wants about Tony is his scent – fire and metal and oil and something indefinably male. When they’re working they spend most of their time just inside each other’s personal space, close enough for Pepper to catch the occasional whiff of him, but not so close that her nose becomes accustomed to it. His workshop is saturated with it, and after days when Pepper is forced to spend long hours conducting business from there because Tony refuses to leave whatever project he’s working on, Pepper goes home, takes a long shower, then buries her nose in her own blouse and uses just her fingers to bring herself to a blinding orgasm, the combination of Tony’s scent and her own going straight to the pit of her gut and between her legs, short-circuiting her brain entirely.

When Rhodey finally brings Tony back from Afghanistan, it takes Pepper several days to realize that one of the reasons she still can’t relax is that Tony’s scent has changed – there is something darker to it now, something shadowy and dank. It isn’t until after Tony’s birthday, after Monaco and the Expo and Vanko and that asshole Justin Hammer, that Pepper realizes she has been smelling Tony’s death all this time. They kiss amidst the chaos, under Rhodey’s indulgent eye, but before they go any further Pepper pushes Tony into her shower and scrubs him until the only scent left on him is her own body wash.

* * *

The first thing Pepper wants about Rhodey and Tony together is the pull between them – any time they are together she can see their love for each other, their long shared history tugging them towards each other like gravity. Though as far as she can tell, they have both always thought themselves too straight to act on the attraction.

They spend less time together than any of them would like, Tony’s & Pepper’s duties to S.I. and Rhodey’s duties to the Air Force often keeping them time zones apart even after Rhodey becomes S.I.’s military liaison; but a few times a year a project needs all of their attention at once, and when that project ends well, when Rhodey is happy that his brothers- and sisters-in-arms will be better protected, when Tony is happy that his genius has been exercised to its fullest, when Pepper is happy that S.I. is flourishing under her stewardship, they give themselves one night to celebrate, just the three of them.

They sprawl in whichever of Tony’s houses is nearest, drinking his best champagne, and as the hour grows late Pepper curls into herself, languid with alcohol and melancholy. Rhodey and Tony fall into each other on the other end of the couch, the alcohol loosening their inhibitions just enough that her presence as an observer doesn’t keep them policing the boundaries of their personal space the way they do when they’re sober. Tony is in the corner, but though they always start side by side and several inches apart, at some point Tony twists to throw his legs over Rhodey’s, pinning him to Tony’s side, and Rhodey bends his head towards Tony’s, chasing the low murmur of Tony’s rambling monologue.

Pepper wants them both, wants them together, wants to feel the force between them surround her. She spares a moment to wish she was still the girl she had been in college, wild in the way only an innocent can be. At nineteen, she would not have hesitated to laughingly order them to kiss, then rub her thighs together and bring herself off discreetly while watching. Now, in her thirties, with too many ugly break-ups behind her, she doesn’t dare push any of them over that line.

She does continue to watch them though, still circling each other through the messes of Afghanistan, the Expo, and New York. They become superheroes; she becomes CEO. They have so much more to lose than when Rhodey was just an anonymous Lieutenant Colonel, Tony was just an out-of-control billionaire, and Pepper was just his long-suffering P.A. She moves into Tony’s house and sets up her home office in one of the rooms with the 180 degree ocean view, so that she can watch with her own eyes and magnified through JARVIS’s cameras as Rhodey and Tony play – that is, train – in the suits, doing aerials at supersonic speeds, flying close enough to grapple midair and then breaking off and zooming away from each other just before they would have plummeted into the Pacific.

* * *

The first time Pepper has them both, Extremis is boiling through her veins and threatening to combust. She is shaking with adrenaline, desperate for something to ground her in her flesh, drive out this mark Killian left on every one of her cells. She reels Tony towards her, frantic; Rhodey turns to leave them alone and she grabs him too. She scrapes her nails down Rhodey’s strong, flexible back; she buries her nose in Tony’s neck and inhales his scent, fire and metal and oil and coconut; she lets their shared gravity hold her together. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Jacqueline Carey's _Kushiel's Dart_ ; the full quote is: "There is no fulfillment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [each pond with its blazing lillies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1265566) by [Tieleen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieleen/pseuds/Tieleen)




End file.
